


Patching the Crust

by Chicklet_Girl



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-31
Updated: 2003-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-16 22:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chicklet_Girl/pseuds/Chicklet_Girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mortality, and comfort, and apple pie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patching the Crust

**Author's Note:**

> I was in the middle of a "write something every day" self-challenge, and posted this to fulfill that requirement. I still think it's Too Schmoopy to Live. *g*

Lex sighed and sat back in the limo. It was amazing how boring these things got to be after awhile: All of the cars had black interiors, and the same high-end brands in the wet bar, and the same dully smooth engines – a steady hum, not the thrumming purr of his Ferrari. A limousine was a stately thing, with none of that sense of banked power aching to be let loose.

Maybe it was just that Lex ached to be let loose. Let loose from the board meetings and the obsequious underlings and the cocktail parties that were all business and mineral water, and no scotch.

No Clark, if he was being honest with himself.

Clark, who had gone back to Smallville for the week that Lex was in Gotham. Clark, who was waiting for him now at the penthouse. Clark, who was about to be fucked senseless, lovingly, as soon as Lex walked through the door.

\------------------------------------------------------

Except that Clark was ... baking? Clark, his navy t-shirt dusted with flour, was standing at the gigantic island in the kitchen, stirring something in a large mixing bowl. Lex remembered the night Clark proved the island was big enough for him to stretch out on by climbing up and doing so. The cook had gotten a substantial raise the next day for not asking where the jars of Nutella had disappeared to. Maybe they could re-enact the experience, once Clark cleared off the island – about half a minute, if he was meticulous. Having a superhero lover had several advantages, both prosaic and purely pleasurable.

Lex leaned against the kitchen doorway, watching Clark mix...whatever it was in the bowl. He was using a strange semicircular utensil with curved metal – blades or something. Clark locked eyes with Lex momentarily, gave him a small smile, then went back to his mixing. Clark apparently had gotten used to being watched while doing mundane things like watching a DVD or reading or cleaning up breakfast dishes. Lex had worried Clark was creeped out by it, and explained that he couldn't help watching him sometimes; Clark responded that he couldn't really complain, when he sometimes watched Lex sleep or read financial reports or listen to music. Clark said he figured they were even.

Lex strolled over to the island and stood opposite Clark. "What's all this?" Lex asked, indicating the bowls, flour canisters, and bags of light-green apples scattered around. "I'm making a pie," Clark answered, with another small smile.

"Special occasion?" Lex dipped his finger in a bowl of cinnamon-sugar mixture and licked it off.

"No, just thought I'd try it." Clark stopped chopping at whatever was in the bowl and put down the strange utensil. Lex walked around the island to stand next to Clark, resting his hand on the small of his back and sliding it around Clark's waist. "Want to ... take a break?" he asked, licking a stripe up his neck to just under his ear.

"Mmmm. I'd love to, but I have to mix in the water while the lard's still cold from the fridge," Clark said and walked over to the sink.

Wait. Lard? "Wait. Lard?"

"Yeah, lard. My mom says it makes the flakiest crust." Clark ran the faucet and added some of the water to the bowl, going at the dough again with the mini-scythe or whatever that thing was.

"Oh." Lex did the dip-and-lick maneuver again with his finger and the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Clark didn't seem to notice, so Lex changed tacks. "You know, there was a study that concluded the scent most sexually stimulating to men is cinnamon," he said, picking up a little plastic canister and lifting off the lid. He held it under Clark's nose. "Is it true for Kryptonians, too?"

"Lex," Clark sighed. "I really want to work on this pie now. And the lard is getting too warm to use."

"Clark, we can call the supermarket later and have _pounds_ of lard delivered right to our door." Okay, that was one of the stranger sentences he'd ever uttered. Lex walked up behind Clark, who was still in front of the mixing bowl. He put his hands on either side of Clark's waist, then slid them down and around until he could just hook his fingertips on Clark's hipbones. Lex leaned up and breathed on the back of Clark's neck. "Mmm, you know how much I love these hips, holding on to them like this while I fuck you? They're like little fuckhandles."

"You stole that word from me, you know," Clark said wryly. "I used it to describe _your_ hips first."

"Well, I was a little preoccupied at the time – and you were under the influence of that red kryptonite. Plagiarism under such circumstances is quite understandable." Lex moved one hand down to cup Clark through his sweatpants, but Clark turned and brushed past on his way down the counter.

"Lex, seriously, I just want to finish making this pie."

Lex clenched his jaw and let out a slow breath. "Clark, we were apart for an entire goddamned week. The only thing that got me through my meetings today was the thought of coming home and being with you. Why do you need to make an apple pie right now?"

Clark crossed his arms, clenched his own jaw and said quietly to the floor, "Because someday, maybe kind of soon, my mom won't be around to make them for me." Suddenly, Lex really understood that silence could be a palpable thing, with weight and presence.

"Ah, Clark." Lex moved forward, wrapped his arms around him. He was good at this, at comforting Clark – now, anyway. It had been a long process, though, of learning what to say, and in what tone of voice, and when not to talk at all, but to simply touch instead, and how to touch, and where.

Clark clutched Lex to him fiercely, until Lex had to grind out his name to save his ribs from cracking. Clark gasped, releasing Lex and backing away. "I'm so sorry, Lex, I just...."

Lex walked over to Clark again and rested their foreheads together. "It's okay, I'm fine." He wrapped his arms around Clark's shoulders again, and Clark buried his face in Lex's shoulder and just...breathed. Shakily, in the way Lex knew meant Clark was close to crying. The way he sounded sometimes when he climbed into bed after patrol, not saying anything, just pulling Lex to him in the violet-gray hours right before dawn. Lex had only learned how to comfort Clark by parroting Clark's own actions when Lex came home pissed off at this business rival or frustrated with that assistant, or ready to go ahead and throttle Lionel. But Clark had learned it from Martha, so Lex owed that to her, too.

They stood there like that for God knew how long, refrigerator humming, Clark's warm breaths and silent tears on Lex's neck, apple slices turning brown on the counter. And yes, Martha's hair was mostly silver now, but in the den, there was a copy of Warrior Angel #66 with dried blood on the cover, and that was part of this, too.

Eventually, Clark took a deep breath and pulled away from Lex a bit, his eyes and nose red and his eyes bloodshot. Lex knew his own eyes were a little red, too, but that was all right. He kissed Clark's mouth, softly, deliberately, and stepped back to the island. "Show me what to do, from the beginning," he said.

>  _Pastry crusts sometimes develop a split along the bottom...or shrink down the sides of the pan....all cracks need to be patched, or else the filling will leak through.... The crust need be returned to the oven only long enough to harden and dry the patch...._  
>  Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker, _The Joy of Cooking_ , revised edition (1997)

  



End file.
